Stars & stocks: Saturn turning retrograde will spur pessimism

Stocks edged higher last week as a fairly cautious mood prevailed over Dalal Street ahead of the RBI meeting.

As expected, the early week saw gains as the Sun’s aspect to Uranus and Jupiter created enough confidence to boost prices. 
The biggest rise of the week occurred on Tuesday, just as the Sun was approaching its key angle with bullish Jupiter.

Last week I had warned about a possible reversal of this mini-trend on Wednesday due to the disruptive influence of the Mars-Ketu aspect.  This manifested more or less as anticipated, although the loss was quite modest.

Even with Thursday’s small gain, Friday was a little lower in keeping with the nervousness created by the Moon-Mars aspect at the end of the week.

So it seems that Jupiter’s bullish influence appears to be waning here, although it is still strong enough to summon buyers when it is in favourable aspect to another planet. 

Meanwhile, Saturn, the planet of pessimism, caution and regulation, could be preparing to play a greater role as it turns retrograde this week.

When a planet reverses its direction and turns retrograde, it is moving very slowly in the sky.  As a rule, the slower the planet, the more powerful it becomes.  In this case, the planet is malefic Saturn, so there is a greater chance for increased pessimism and a need for regulation of risk and investment.

Given the RBI’s meeting this week will address inflationary pressures, it seems even more likely to significantly raise rates to choke off excessive economic activity and speculation.

This week promises to be an especially interesting one as Saturn turns retrograde while in very tense square aspect with Mercury.
While the actual retrograde station occurs on Wednesday when the markets are closed, Indian markets are unlikely to escape its effects.

Monday features two simultaneous negative influences as Venus (money, spending) is aspected by Saturn (restriction, loss) and Mars (risk, action) forms a minor aspect with Pluto (power, willfulness).

The planetary situation does not improve for Tuesday as the Moon conjoins Saturn and Mercury tightens its aspect to them both. 

The late-week period is less negative, however, as the Moon applies to its conjunction with benefic Venus.  Friday’s planetary alignment suggests that it may be the most bullish day of the week. 

Crude oil declined last week as it failed to break above technical resistance levels once again and closed below $90.   This bearish outcome was largely in keeping with expectations as we saw firmness early in the week on the Sun-Jupiter aspect, but any gains were erased later on as the negative Mars and Ketu influence took hold.

This week’s Mercury-Saturn aspect will likely undermine speculative activity in commodity markets so declines are more likely here.  Some recovery is possible late in the week although it may be quite modest.

As the Sun moves ever closer to its eventual conjunction with Mars on February 4, it seems that gold will continue to have a difficult time of it.

This week’s Mercury-Saturn aspect may well add another negative factor to gold’s celestial burden that will increase the chances of further declines.

The writer is a neo-Vedic astrologer specialising in predictive astrology. He runs the website www.modernvedicastrology.com